Petty In Withdrawal, But Still Revved Up

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — . . . and the King was in the counting house, counting all his money.

"I'm like a duck out of water," says the King, Richard Petty, "because I don't know what to do when the car is running."

After 35 years and a record 200 victories, Richard Petty is attending his first race as a car owner. Clearly, it will take some getting used to.

For 35 years, for 1,185 races, Petty always knew where he'd be when the green flag fell-behind the wheel of the familiar Petty blue and red No. 43 Pontiac.

Now, everything has changed. The name and the number, and when Rick Wilson wheels Petty's No. 44 Pontiac onto the track Thursday in a 125-mile qualifying race for Sunday's Daytona 500, Richard Petty has no idea where he'll be.

"Will I wind up on the truck as a spotter or in the pits?" he wonders. If he's in the pits, will he take total charge the way Junior Johnson, another former driving legend, does?

"I don't feel I've got the experience to take total control of the deal," he says. "I've been the owner, but as the driver I've been just part of the team. I could dictate by what I saw out there, but I didn't see everything."

So team manager Dale Inman and crew chief Robbie Loomis will run the team while Petty finds himself again. "I'm still in the learning process," he says.

Petty literally is weaning himself away from the race car. That, he says, was one purpose of last year's Fan Appreciation Tour "so I could get it in my mind that this was my last race at each particular track. It took me a year to wind down."

"He's not really used to being retired yet, I'll tell you that," says Petty's son Kyle. "I think things got so hectic for him last year he didn't get the opportunity to enjoy it."

Petty still finds it difficult to know what to do when Wilson has the car on the racetrack. "To be honest, I haven't been here but a couple of times when the car is running," he says. "We had eight tests over the winter, and I went to one of them.

"Really, that's the way I wanted it, to keep me occupied with something else. Hopefully, I'll wind down a little at a time so it won't be cold turkey."

Petty still finds himself besieged by autograph seekers, "but I feel that will fall off and I'll have time to be closer to the race car. But there's no way to cut it off completely at one time."

Petty admits there is a part of him that isn't ready to let go of the spotlight that has caught him in its glare for all these years.

"I haven't thought about it before, but I guess so," he says. "But I've never been one to live in the past. I've always looked at today and tomorrow. Yesterday's gone."

His first major decision as an owner was to hire Wilson, a 40-year-old out-of-work driver who has never won a Winston Cup race.

"I'm going to have to keep him calmed down a little," says Petty. "I don't want him to be trying to prove too much at one time. He's been out a year and I'm sure he wants to prove himself as much as we want to prove ourselves.

"But we want to do it conservatively. That's one reason we settled on Rick. We felt he could accept that better than a lot of others. He's pretty level-headed. He fits in good with our philosophy."

Which is? "To do everything you can to win as slow as you can."

Wilson, for his part, is not daunted by the prospect of replacing an icon. "The pressure isn't there, I'll tell you that right now," he says, "because we put a lot of pressure on ourselves.

"Of course, when you've got Richard around you get a lot of media. But, hey, last year I didn't have any so I kind of enjoy it, and I hope we get more because it means we're running good."

Wilson lost his ride after the Daytona 500 last year and spent the rest of the season "outside the fence looking in. I had some chances, but I'd made up my mind if it wasn't a good ride I wasn't going to take it."

Although never a winner, Wilson once seemed to have a promising future when he was driving for the Morgan-McClure team. "We were growing," he recalls, "but I got caught up in the big roll. They were learning, and I thought I could better myself if we went different ways. They did, and I didn't."

The Morgan-McClure team won the Daytona 500 with Ernie Irvan two years ago and remains one of the top contenders in Winston Cup racing.

"It's something you can't back up and change," says Wilson. "At the time it was my decision. It made me a better race car driver and a better person because I know now that everything's not rosy out there all the time."

Everything seems rosy now. Wilson ran the ninth quickest qualifying lap for the Daytona 500 and is assured a spot in the field.

There are those, however, who believe that Wilson is only keeping the car seat warm for Kyle and that in a few years Kyle will leave Felix Sabates and return to the family business.

Wilson deflects the notion with good humor. Taking note of Richard Petty's rock-ribbed Southern conservatism, he quips: "I don't think I've got to worry about it until Kyle gets a haircut."